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MASTERPIECES 
IN     COLOUR 

EDITED    BY     -     - 
M.  HENRY    ROUJON 


MEISSONIER 

(1815-1891) 


IN  THE  SAME  SERIES 


REYNOLDS 

VELASQUEZ 

GREUZE 

TURNER 

BOTTICELLI 

ROMNEY 

REMBRANDT 

BELLINI 

FRA  ANGELICO 

ROSSETTI 

RAPHAEL 

LEIGHTON 

HOLMAN  HUNT 

TITIAN 

MILLAIS 

LUINI 

FRANZ  HALS 

CARLO  DOLCI 

GAINSBOROUGH 

TINTORETTO 

VAN  DYCK 

DA  VINCI 

WHISTLER 

MONTAGNA 


RUBENS 

HOLBEIN 

BURNE-JONES 

LE  BRUN 

CHARDIN 

MILLET 

RAEBURN 

SARGENT 

CONSTABLE 

MEMLING 

FRAGONARD 

DiJRER 

LAWRENCE 

HOGARTH 

WATTEAU 

MURILLO 

WATTS 

INGRES 

COROT 

DELACROIX 

FRA  LIPPO  LIPPI 

PUVIS  DE  CHAVANNES 

MEISSONIER 


IN  PREPARATION 


GEROME 
VERONESE 


BOUCHER 
PERUGINO 


VAN  EYCK 


r 


PLATE    I.  — THE  FLUTE-PLAYER 

(In  the  Musee  du  Louvre) 

Meissonier's  erudition  was  such  that  it  enabled  him  to  combine 
the  skill  of  the  artist  with  the  utmost  fidelity  in  details  of  costume. 
In  the  Flute-player,  the  artist  predominates.  This  figure,  with  foot 
slightly  raised  in  the  act  of  beating  time,  is  admirably  life-like. 


MEISSONIER 

TRANSLATED     FROM    THE    FRENCH 
BY     FREDERIC     TABER     COOPER 

ILLUSTRATED   WITH    EIGHT 
REPRODUCTIONS    IN    COLOUR 


FREDERICK    A.    STOKES    COMPANY 
NEW  YORK  —  PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,    ign,    BY 
FREDERICK    A.    STOKES     COMPANY 


May  igia 


THB.PMMrTOU-PRBSS 

[  W  •  D  •  O] 
NORWOOD- MASS- U'S'A 


b'^r 


o 

CM 
z: 
-3 


CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction 11 

Early  Years 16 

First  Success .30 

Etchings 32 

Paintings 36 

Military  Paintings 6i 


vu 


335659 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Plate 

I.    The  Flute-Player  ....         Frontispiece 

In  the  Musee  du  Louvre 

Page 

II.   Les  Ordonnances 14 

Tommy  Thierry  Collection,  Musee  du  Louvre 


III.  The  Confidence 

Chauchard  Bequest,  Musee  du  Louvre 

IV.  1814 

Chauchard  Bequest,  Mus£e  du  Louvre 


24 


34 


V.   Awaiting 40 

In  the  Musee  du  Louvre 

VI.   The  Players  at  Bowls 50 

In  the  Casa-Riera  Collection 

VII.   Amateurs  of  Paintings 60 

In  the  Musee  du  Louvre 

VIII.    Napoleon  III  at  Solferino 70 

Tommy  Thierry  Bequest,  Musee  du  Louvre 


INTRODUCTION 

ONE  day  — it  was  neither  in  war  time  nor 
during  manoeuvres  —  on  a  July  morning, 
with  the  sun  shining  radiantly,  a  squadron  of 
cuirassiers  passed  at  full  gallop  across  a  magnifi- 
cent field  of  ripening  grain,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Poissy,  although  on  every  side  there  were  wide 
reaches  of  fallow  land  and  pasture. 

IZ 


12  MEISSONIER 

When  this  hurricane  of  horses  and  men  had, 
Hke  a  blazing  meteor,  devastated  and  laid  low  the 
splendid  gold  of  the  crops,  two  men  remained 
behind,  surveying  the  scene  with  visible  satisfac- 
tion and  undisguised  interest. 

One  of  the  two  was  tall  and  the  other  short. 
The  tall  man  was  Colonel  Dupressoir,  who  had 
directed  the  manoeuvre.  The  other,  an  elderly 
man,  short  of  leg,  and  ruddy  of  complexion,  with 
a  long  beard,  white  and  silken,  and  a  singularly 
expressive  eye,  was  the  painter,  Meissonier.  The 
latter  had  achieved  his  object.  Thanks  to  long 
insistence  and  the  payment  of  indemnities,  he  had 
brought  about  the  passage  of  cavalry  across  that 
field,  in  order  that  he  might  make  studies  from 
nature,  needed  for  a  painting  then  in  hand,  1807^ 
of  how  standing  grain  looks  after  it  has  been 
crushed  and  trampled  by  the  onrush  of  a  charge. 

The  whole  artist,  whose  work  we  are  about 
to  study  side  by  side  with  his  life,  is  summed 
up  in  this  anecdote.  It  reveals  one  of  the  most 
typical   sides    of  his   temperament,   and,   conse- 


PLATE   II.  — LES   ORDONNANCES 
(Tommy  Thierry  Collection,  Mus€e  du  Louvre) 

Every  one  of  Meissonier's  pictures  is  a  document  which  may  be 
profitably  consulted  if  one  wished  to  decide  a  detail  of  costume 
or  armament.  His  consciousness  in  this  regard  has  become  pro- 
verbial. 


MEISSONIER  15 

quently,  of  his  talent:  a  constant  and  scrupulous 
endeavour,  maintained  even  at  the  price  of  sac- 
rifices that  would  seem  excessive  to  the  layman, 
to  interpret  nature  precisely  as  she  is.  It  was 
this  noble  ambition  —  and  we  shall  find  other 
examples  of  it  in  the  course  of  an  artistic  career 
in  which  it  was  the  dominant  note  —  that  made 
him  say  to  his  pupils,  with  a  conviction  that 
commanded  respect:  "If  I  should  sketch  a  horse 
from  memory  I  should  feel  that  I  had  been 
guilty  of  an  insult  to  nature!" 

And  it  is  because  he  conceived  his  ideal  after 
this  fashion  that  this  unerring  painter  of  so  many 
military  types  and  scenes  never  attempted  to  pic- 
ture skirmishes  or  battles.  It  was  not  that  he  did 
not  want  to,  or  had  not  cherished  the  dream  of 
doing  so.  But  he  had  never  seen  a  battle;  and 
a  battle  is  a  thing  that  cannot  be  reconstructed, 
like  a  marching  column  or  a  detail  of  camp  life. 
Accordingly  he  painted  none,  because  he  decided, 
with  a  certain  loftiness,  that  he  did  not  really 
know  what  a  battle  was! 


i6  MEISSONIER 

Let  US  keep  this  attitude  of  mind  before  us, 
and  even  underscore  it  in  our  memory.  For  this 
alone,  in  a  vague  way,  would  sufBce  to  charac- 
terize the  artist  with  whom  we  are  concerned; 
and  his  whole  long,  rich,  and  fruitful  career  may 
be  summed  up  as  a  successful  and  varied  appli- 
cation of  one  great  principle:  devout  and  inflex- 
ible  respect  for  reality. 

EARLY   YEARS 

When  Jean-Louis-Ernest  Meissonier  was  born 
at  Lyons  in  1815,  under  the  fading  light  of  an 
Imperial  sunset,  these  were  scarcely  the  ideas 
that  predominated  in  the  national  school  of 
French  art.  Pictorial  art,  to  confine  ourselves  to 
that,  had,  both  before  and  during  the  First 
Empire,  achieved  at  most  a  lumbering  and 
trammelled  flight;  and  the  influence  of  anti- 
quity, so  perceptible  in  the  language  as  well  as 
in  the  manners  and  fashions  at  the  close  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  served  only  to  confine  the 
inspiration    of   artists    more    strictly   within    the 


MEISSONIER  17 

bounds  of  classic  tradition.  Roman  characters, 
Roman  costumes,  Roman  virtues,  —  such  was  the 
ideal  to  which  each  debutant  who  did  not  revolt 
openly  must  make  surrender!  To  be  sure,  the 
commanding  figure  of  David  gave  a  magnificent 
prestige  to  this  rather  cold  and  dishearteningly 
classic  programme.  But,  like  all  great  artists, 
David  was  exceptional;  and  he  stands  today  as 
tlie  only  one  who,  in  an  epoch  sadly  poor  in 
genius,  produced  a  host  of  living  masterpieces, 
to  swell  the  lists  of  a  school  so  artificial  that  it 
would  now  be  forgotten,  save  as  an  echo  of  his 
name.  It  is  true  that,  by  way  of  ransom,  he 
spent  much  time  in  painting  vast  canvases  that 
today  hold  but  a  small  place  in  his  life  work. 

On  the  threshold  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
in  1799,  Eugene  Delacroix  was  born.  It  was  he 
who  brought  a  new  spirit  into  French  painting 
and,  single-handed,  wrought  a  great  revolution. 

Such  is  not  destined  to  be  the  role  of  Meis- 
sonier !  His  was  neither  so  tragic  a  struggle,  nor 
so  immense  a  triumph.     Unlike  Delacroix,  he  did 


i8  MEISSONIER 

not  restore  the  Beautiful  nor  hand  down  new 
forms  to  glory.  He  succeeded  none  the  less  in 
inscribing  his  name  in  modest  yet  precise  char- 
acters—  that  will  long  remain  legible  —  upon  the 
marble  of  the  temple. 

How  did  the  artist  get  his  start?  According 
to  the  monotonous  and  mournful  formula,  "after 
a  hard  struggle."  The  lives  of  all  beloved  and 
admired  artists  have  this  in  common  with  fairy 
tales:  they  always  begin  badly  and  end  happily 
(unluckily,  they  sometimes  end  a  long  time  after 
the  death  of  the  principal  hero!). 

The  father  of  Meissonier  was  a  dealer  in  colo- 
nial products  and  chemicals,  and  kept  a  drug 
and  provision  shop  in  the  Rue  des  Ecouffes. 
Beneath  the  low  ceiling  of  this  shop  and  between 
walls  lined  with  drawers,  bearing  strange  labels, 
the  childhood  of  Jean-Louis-Ernest  was  passed. 
His  mother  was  a  fragile  woman.  We  are  told 
further  that  she  was  sensitive  to  music  and  that 
she  had  learned  to  paint  on  porcelain  and  to 
make  miniatures. 


MEISSONIER  19 

Are  we  at  liberty  to  attribute  to  the  tender 
and  brief  contact  of  that  mother,  who  died  so 
young,  with  the  life  of  her  child,  the  origin  of 
his  artistic  vocation?  It  is  pleasant  at  least  to 
fancy  so  and  to  try  to  believe  it,  even  though  we 
are  told  that  parents  bequeath  to  their  children, 
not  a  vocation  —  a  mysterious  gift,  of  unknown 
origin  —  but  rather  a  certain  number  of  necessary 
aptitudes  and  qualities,  which  will  enable  them 
to  profit  by  the  gift,  if  perchance  it  falls  to  them 
from  Heaven. 

Yet  the  fact  remains  that  in  the  depths  of  a 
cupboard,  in  the  house  on  the  Rue  des  Ecouffes, 
there  lay  the  paint-box  which  Mme.  Meissonier 
once  used,  while  taking  miniature  lessons  from 
the  authoritative  hands  of  Mme.  Jacottot.  As  joy- 
ously as  other  children  would  have  appropriated 
a  jar  of  jam,  the  boy  possessed  himself  of  the 
magic  box,  and  on  that  selfsame  day  entered, 
with  stumbling  fingers,  upon  the  laborious  mis- 
sion which  was  destined  to  cease  only  with  his 
life. 


20  MEISSONIER 

He  was  not  a  very  good  student.  A  report 
has  been  preserved  of  his  standing  in  a  school  in 
the  Rue  des  Francs-Bourgeois,  at  Paris,  where 
his  later  childhood  was  passed.  In  this  docu- 
ment the  proper  authorities  alleged  that  the  pupil, 
Ernest  Meissonier,  showed  "too  marked  a  ten- 
dency to  draw  sketches  in  his  copy-books,  instead 
of  paying  attention  to  his  teachers." 

The  said  tendency  did  not  fail  to  awaken 
anxiety  in  M.  Meissonier,  the  father.  It  should 
be  remembered  that,  for  some  years  previous,  the 
question  of  painting  in  France  had  been  taking 
on  a  rather  bitter  tone.  The  romantic  school  was 
entering  boldly  into  the  lists,  and  among  its  cham- 
pions were  some  who  distinguished  themselves 
less  by  their  works  than  by  their  long  beards 
and  the  public  challenge  they  flung  at  their  tra- 
ditional enemy,  the  phalanx  of  David's  pupils. 
And  among  the  latter,  it  must  be  owned,  the 
majority  made  no  answer  beyond  a  disdainful 
silence  and  some  mediocre  paintings,  —  with  just 
one  single  exception:   the  admirable,  undoubted, 


MEISSONIER  21 

impeccable  exception  of  the  great  Jean-Dominique 
Ingres. 

The  press,  the  art  clubs,  not  to  mention  the 
salons,  were  all  more  or  less  divided  between 
the  romantics  and  the  classicists,  the  innovators 
and  the  traditionalists,  and  fanned  the  flames  of 
a  quarrel  which,  in  view  of  the  worth  of  the  two 
leaders  —  one  of  whom  spelled  genius  and  the 
other  perfection  —  was  destined  to  appear  without 
sanction  to  the  eyes  of  posterity. 

But,  as  may  be  imagined,  these  tumultuous 
polemics  were  not  calculated  to  reassure  a  thor- 
oughly pacific  bourgeois,  already  much  alarmed 
to  find  that  he  had  begotten  an  artist.  And  just 
at  this  crisis  another  damnatory  report  exploded, 
this  time  from  a  master  of  the  eighth  form  in  a 
school  on  the  Rue  de  Jouy:  "Ernest  has  a  de- 
cided talent  for  drawing.  The  mere  sight  of  a 
picture  often  takes  our  attention  from  our  serious 
duties."  This  diagnosis,  so  categoric  underneath 
its  familiar  form  and  somewhat  faulty  grammar, 
sounded  a  serious  cry  of  alarm.     It  was  promptly 


22  MEISSONIER 

heeded  by  the  father,  and  young  Ernest  was 
forthwith  entered  as  a  druggist's  apprentice,  in  a 
house  on  the  Rue  des  Lombards. 

Yet  it  was  not  long  afterwards,  thanks  to  a 
dogged  persistence,  that  the  lad  had  overcome 
paternal  opposition  and  was  allowed  to  do  head 
studies  in  charcoal,  at  the  studio  of  a  certain 
Julien  Petier,  whose  slender  artistic  fame  rested 
solely  upon  the  fact  that,  once  upon  a  time,  he 
won  the  grand  prix  de  Rome. 

Meissonier  very  shortly  quitted  this  somewhat 
dull  discipline,  and  he  stayed  scarcely  longer  in 
the  studio  of  Leon  Cogniet,  which  at  that  time 
was  quite  celebrated.  Yet  during  the  four  months 
that  he  remained  under  the  guidance  of  the  worthy 
author  of  The  Four  Seasons,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  he  laboured  greatly  to  the  profit  of  his  art. 

M.  Phillippe  Burty,  his  contemporary  and  his 
first  biographer,  explains  to  us  that,  while  at 
Cogniet's,  young  Meissonier  did  not  work  like  the 
other  students,  from  casts  or  nude  models:  "He 
passed   his  days  in  an   enclosure  adjoining   the 


PLATE   III.  — THE   CONFIDENCE 
(Chauchard  Bequest,  Musde  du  Louvre) 

This  painting,  given  to  the  Louvre  in  1908  by  M.  Chauchard,  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  that  famous  collection,  owing  to  the 
incomparable  naturalness  of  the  attitudes,  as  well  as  to  the  fin- 
ished art  of  its  composition. 


MEISSONIER  25 

Studio,  where  the  master  was  engaged  upon  his 
ceiling  painting  for  the  Louvre,  the  Expedition 
into  Egypt,  and  hired  by  the  day  soldiers  in  repub- 
lican uniform,  dragoons,  artillerymen  and  their 
horses."  In  the  midst  of  this  resurrection  of  a 
past  that  was  still  quite  recent,  in  the  very  pres- 
ence of  the  stage  setting,  the  reproduction  of  the 
Napoleonic  Epic,  he  suddenly  conceived  of  it  as 
the  greatest  of  all  subjects  that  might  tempt  his 
accurate  artist  fingers.  It  must  have  seemed  to 
him,  later  on,  that  he  himself  had  witnessed  its 
close. 

But  while  waiting  to  achieve  his  dream,  he 
had  to  achieve  a  living.  This  was  not  easy. 
His  father  spared  him  an  allowance  of  fifteen 
francs  a  month,  not  counting  the  privilege  of  din- 
ing at  home  once  a  week,  and  from  time  to  time 
allowed  himself  to  be  cajoled  into  buying  a 
small   aquarelle. 

Be  one's  tastes  never  so  modest,  it  is  difficult 
under  such  conditions  to  make  both  ends  meet, 
and  there  was  many  a  day  of  sacrifice  and  pri- 


26  MEISSONIER 

vation  for  the  future  painter  of  canvases  des- 
tined later  to  sell  at  a  hundred  thousand  francs 
per  square  decimeter.  He  shared  his  poverty 
light-heartedly  with  a  chosen  circle  of  friends 
whose  fame  in  after  years  has  made  their  names 
familiar:  among  others  Daumier,  the  caricaturist, 
and  Daubigny,  the  great  landscape  painter,  with 
whom,  it  is  told,  Meissonier  collaborated  in  manu- 
facturing for  the  export  trade  canvases  that  were 
generously  paid  for  at  five  francs  a  meter! 

He  was  unable  to  enter  the  classes  of  Paul 
Delaroche,  the  monthly  charge  for  admission  to 
the  studio  from  which  The  Princes  in  the  Tower 
had  issued  reaching  the  exorbitant  sum  of  twenty 
francs!  He  had  to  content  himself  with  fre- 
quenting the  Louvre. 

Unlooked-for  windfall:  in  company  with  his 
friend  Trimolet,  a  needy  artist  who  succumbed 
to  poverty  before  his  real  talent  had  had  time  to 
ripen,  he  obtained  an  opportunity  to  decorate 
fans.  Then,  some  religious  figures  and  emblems 
of  saints  for  certain  publishers  in  the  Rue  Saint- 


MEISSONIER  27 

Jacques.  This  meant  the  assurance  of  an  honest 
living;  they  could  go  to  a  restaurant  twice  a 
day,  every  day  in  the  week,  and  proudly  pass 
the  paint-shop  knowing  their  account  was  paid. 

When  only  sixteen  years  of  age,  Meissonier 
exhibited  for  the  first  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
his  name  appears  in  the  Salon  catalogue  of  1834, 
accredited  with  A  Visit  to  the  Burgomaster.  In 
this  picture  one  may  find,  I  will  not  say  in 
miniature  (since  all  his  paintings  were  destined 
to  be  contained  in  narrow  limits)  but  in  a  youth- 
ful way,  an  indication  of  those  qualities  of  relief 
and  of  realism  which  so  energetically  stamped 
his  productions  later  on. 

Is  there  any  need  of  saying  that  the  public 
failed  to  distinguish  a  work  which  did  not  suffi- 
ciently distinguish  itself? 

The  first  connoisseurs  to  pay  attention  to  the 
newcomer  were  editors,  the  severe  and  imposing 
editors. 

Not  quite  at  the  start,  naturally ;  and  the  first 
instalment  of   illustrations  that   he  offered  to  a 


28  MEISSONIER 

magazine  then  famous,  the  name  of  which  is 
now  forgotten  —  four  Httle  sepia  drawings  —  was 
curtly  rejected.  But  he  refused  to  be  discour- 
aged, and  not  long  afterwards  deliberately  made 
his  way  to  the  celebrated  art-publisher,  Curmer. 
This  bold  venture  went  badly  at  the  start.  The 
publisher,  rendered  distrustful  by  so  youthful  and 
importunate  a  face,  assured  the  young  man  and 
the  friend  who  had  introduced  him,  that  "  for 
the  time  being  he  had  nothing  for  him." 

But  by  a  providential  hazard,  the  short  con- 
versation which  followed  as  a  matter  of  civility 
before  leave-taking  touched  upon  the  subject  of 
life-masks.  At  that  time  life-masks  happened  to 
be  quite  the  rage:  people  had  their  faces  moulded 
in  plaster  just  as  nowadays  they  sit  for  a  photo- 
graph ;  and  young  Meissonier  related,  not  with- 
out vanity,  that  on  the  preceding  Sunday  he  had 
taken  the  mask  of  the  Johannot  brothers,  and 
he  added  that  he  knew  those  two  princes  of 
engraving  quite  intimately. 

Famous  acquaintances  are  always  useful;  the 


MEISSONIER  29 

proof  of  this  is  that  M.  Curmer  accepted  an  in- 
vitation to  go  the  following  Sunday  to  Meisso- 
nier's  studio,  to  sit  for  his  life-mask,  —  and,  once 
there,  it  was  impossible  for  him  not  to  order  an 
aquarelle. 

The  door  of  this  publishing  house,  however, 
was  as  yet  only  half-way  open  to  the  artist;  for 
when  his  friend  Marville,  *'  an  etcher  in  soft- 
ground,  mediocre  but  prolific,"  talked  of  having 
him  collaborate  on  the  Curmer  edition  of  Paul 
and  Virginia,  the  publisher,  a  prey  once  more 
to  his  original  distrust,  entrusted  him  to  begin 
with, — with  just  one  of  the  special  illustrations, — 
to  re-engrave  ! 

Meissonier  acquitted  himself  brilliantly  of  this 
half-task,  with  the  result  that  he  was  entrusted 
with  several  other  illustrations  for  the  celebrated 
edition  of  Paul  and  Virginia,  of  which  no  biblio- 
phile can  ever  speak  without  enthusiasm.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  had  an  entire  series  to  make 
for  an  edition,  no  less  sumptuous,  of  The  Indian 
Cabin,  also  a  work  of  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre. 


30  MEISSONIER 

FIRST  SUCCESS 
And  then,  in  the  words  of  one  of  his  con- 
temporaries: "The  first  rays  of  fame  that 
caressed  him  streamed  from  those  admirable 
and  diminutive  drawings  for  The  Indian  Cabin. 
He  had  done  much  sketching  in  the  Jardin  des 
Plantes,  in  the  conservatories,  where  the  flora 
of  the  tropics  expanded  opulently;  also,  before  the 
windows  of  those  shops  of  bric-a-brac,  abound- 
ing in  exotic  objects,  which  in  those  bygone  days 
stretched  in  a  row  facing  the  entrance  to  the 
Louvre,  on  the  Place  du  Carrousel.  All  that  he 
had  to  do  was  to  rummage  among  those  sketches 
in  order  to  give  his  composition  an  inimitable 
stamp  of  truth,  such  as  was  seldom  attempted 
by  illustrators  of  his  nation.  It  was  a  simple 
thing  to  convert  into  an  ornamental  letter  a 
storm-broken  lily,  a  group  of  Indian  weapons, 
some  Javanese  musical  instruments.  If  the  text 
called  for  the  'emblems  of  mental  toil,'  the 
young  artist  heaped  his  table  with  volumes  bound 


MEISSONIER  31 

in  parchment  or  full  calf,  acquired  for  a  few  sous 
from  the  stands  along  the  quays,  and  he  had 
only  to  copy,  with  all  the  naivete  of  the  Primi- 
tives, the  gleam  of  the  edges,  the  bands  on  the 
backs,  the  slips  of  paper  alternating  with  the 
silken  bookmarks." 

And  the  critic  proceeds  to  cite  an  example  of 
that  "prodigious  finish"  which  Theophile  Gautier 
subsequently  recognized  as  the  most  popular 
characteristic,  so  to  speak,  of  his  noble  talent: 
"In  two  of  these  miniature  vignettes,  measuring 
less  than  four  centimetres,  two  engravings  can 
be  made  out,  hanging  upon  a  library  wall;  one 
of  them  interprets  quite  scrupulously  The  Pariah 
thinking  of  the  English  Doctor,  and  the  other 
The  English  Doctor  thinking  of  the  Pariah.  Be- 
tween these  engravings  can  be  made  out,  hanging 
on  a  nail,  and  possessing  all  the  characteristics 
described  in  the  text,  the  pipe  of  English  leather, 
the  mouthpiece  of  which  was  of  yellow  amber, 
and  that  of  the  Pariah,  the  stem  of  which  was 
of  bamboo  and  the  bowl  of  terra-cotta." 


32  MEISSONIER 

The  success  of  this  de  luxe  edition  was  rapid 
and  important.  The  first  step  along  the  path  of 
glory  was  taken,  —  and  on  that  path  the  first 
step  costs  more  than  anywhere  else.  Henceforth, 
no  more  need  of  soliciting  work;  far  otherwise. 
The  artist  still  continued  to  do  illustrating. 
Mention  must  be  made  of  the  drawings  that 
he  did  for  Frenchmen  Painted  by  Themselves^ 
and  later  —  here  ends  this  chapter  of  his  artistic 
career  —  the  plates  that  served  as  illustrations  for 
The  Fallen  Angel,  by  Lamartine  (edition  in  two 
volumes,  already  unobtainable  twenty  years  ago), 
and  the  Contes  Remois,  by  M.  de  Chevigne;  this 
last  series  bears  date  1858. 

ETCHINGS 
Let  us  add,  for  the  sake  of  being  complete, 
without  wasting  undue  space  upon  side-issues, 
that  Meissonier  also  experimented  in  etching. 
Authoritative  critics  assert  that  these  attempts, 
in  which  the  master  modestly  refused  to  see 
anything    more   than    "essays,"    will    eventually 


PLATE   IV.  — 1814 

(Chauchard  Bequest,  Musee  du  Louvre) 

This  picture,  so  masterly  and  so  dramatic  in  composition,  is 
assuredly  one  of  the  most  widely  known  in  existence.  The 
sombre  visage  of  the  Emperor,  the  severity  of  the  landscape,  the 
prevailing  tone  of  sadness,  admirably  rendered,  explain  the  wide 
favour  enjoyed  by  this  celebrated  work,  further  popularized  in 
engravings. 


MEISSONIER  35 

become  "the  most  precious  treasures  that  bear 
his  signature." 

Besides,  with  one  exception,  — T/i^  Smoker, 
popularized  by  a  large  printing, — they  are  quite 
limited  in  number,  and  already  eagerly  sought 
after  by  collectors.  And  with  all  the  more  rea- 
son, because,  at  the  fairly  distant  period  of  which 
we  speak,  the  perfected  processes  for  preserving 
the  burined  lines  on  the  copper  plate  in  all  their 
original  fineness  and  precision  had  not  yet  been 
invented;  accordingly,  the  later  proofs  in  his 
series  of  etchings  betray  a  wearing  of  the  copper 
which  could  not  fail  to  lower  their  value.  At 
the  time  of  Meissonier's  death,  a  proof  of  The 
Preparations  for  the  Duel,  in  which  the  signature 
was  legible,  "in  the  lower  left  corner,"  brought 
upward  of  one  thousand  francs. 

The  most  beautiful  of  all  Meissonier's  etchings 
are,  without  question:  The  Violin,  which  he  en- 
graved with  a  burin  at  once  powerful,  delicate 
and,  as  some  critics  phrase  it,  "vibrant,"  to  adorn 
the  visiting  card   of  the  celebrated  lute  player, 


36  MEISSONIER 

Vuillaume;  The  Signor  Annibale,  representing, 
in  braggadocio  pose  and  costume,  the  celebrated 
actor,  Rdgnier,  of  the  Comedie-Francaise,  in  a 
role  that  is  by  no  means  the  least  celebrated  in 
Augier's  Adventuress;  and  The  Trooper Sy  seven 
figures  whose  personalities  stand  out  rather  curi- 
ously and  exhibit  a  picturesque  diversity. 

The  Reporting  Sergeant  was  a  miniature  sketch 
made,  in  order  to  try  the  ground,  on  the  margin 
of  the  plate  on  which  The  Smoker  was  etched. 
It  is  a  finished  and  charming  little  work,  full  of 
expression,  of  life  and  actuality,  condensed  into 
a  microscopic  square  of  paper. 

But  what  of  his  paintings?  We  left  them  for 
a  time,  in  order  to  clear  up  certain  points  regard- 
ing Meissonier's  incursion  into  the  realm  of  the 
engraver, — an  incursion  from  which  he  brought 
back,  incidentally,  both  fame  and  fortune. 

PAINTINGS 
He  profited  from  it  above  all  in   being  able 
to  continue  to  paint.    For  the  fact  remains  that, 


MEISSONIER  37 

from  the  time  of  his  youngest  efforts,  such  as 
The  Patrol  Removing  a  Body  from  an  Outpost, 
his  earliest  known  work,  one  of  the  collection 
that  his  father  bought,  to  swell  somewhat  that 
famous  monthly  income  of  fifteen  francs,  he 
never  abandoned  his  brushes. 

W^e  left  him  unsuccessfully  exhibiting,  at  the 
Salon  of  1834,  a  small  painting,  dealing  with  a 
Flemish  subject.  Let  us  add,  as  a  final  word, 
that  this  genre  picture  was  accompanied  by 
an  aquarelle,  entered  in  the  catalogue  of  that 
date  as:  Soldier  to  Whom  in  the  Citizen's  House, 
a  Young  Girl  serves  a  Mug  of  Beer.  This  aqua- 
relle was  purchased  for  one  hundred  francs  by 
the  Society  of  Friends  of  Art. 

The  following  year  he  did  not  exhibit.  This, 
unfortunately,  was  not  because  he  had  nothing 
to  offer;  but  the  pictures  that  he  sent,  consisting 
of  The  Chess  Players  and  The  Little  Messenger, 
had  not  been  accepted  by  the  jury.  There  was 
an  excess  of  severity  in  this  refusal;  and  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  candidate  for  admission  was 


t^»Tir-  ^*  r~  £x 


38  MEISSONIER 

Still  under  the  age  of  twenty,  the  two  pictures 
offered  possessed  certain  genuine  qualities  that 
rendered  the  sentence  of  the  jury  cruelly  unjust. 

Such  was  the  opinion  of  the  artist,  who  in 
1836  offered  the  same  pictures  over  again;  it  was 
also  the  opinion  of  the  jury  of  that  year,  for  it 
accepted  them. 

Two  years  later,  Meissonier  exhibited  a  Monk 
Consoling  a  Dying  Man.  This  canvas  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  who  bought 
it  for  five  hundred  francs.  (Fourteen  years  later, 
at  the  sale  consequent  upon  the  Duke's  death, 
this  same  Monk  was  resold  for  4,000  francs.) 

In  1839,  Meissonier  attracted  the  attention  of 
the  critics.  For  example,  you  may  find  in  a 
paper  called  U Artiste,  in  a  critique  of  the  Salon: 
"And  I  almost  forgot  an  adorable  little  English 
Doctor,  by  M.  Meissonier,  a  charming  miniature 
in  oil,  extraordinarily  fine  and  subtle."  These 
lines  were  signed  by  Jules  Janin,  who  at  that 
time  maintained  over  French  criticism  a  sort  of 
sacerdotal  sovereignty,  comparable  only  to  that 


PLATE   v.  — AWAITING 
(In  the  Musee  du  Louvre) 

This  painting,  which  is  frequently  confused  with  another  by  the 
same  artist,  entitled  The  Man  at  the  Window,  is  chiefly  noteworthy  for 
its  finished  detail  and  prodigious  ability  of  execution.  Meissonier 
herein  reveals  his  profound  understanding  of  the  principles  of 
chiaroscuro. 


t 


MEISSONIER  41 

which,  so  far  as  the  national  school  of  painting 
was  concerned,  was  afterwards  held  by  the  artist 
whom  Janin  then  heralded  with  an  almost 
exaggerated  cordiality. 

But  the  small  size  of  Meissonier's  pictures! 
That  is  the  one  thing  that,  for  the  world  at  large, 
contemporaries  and  posterity  alike,  is  the  keynote 
of  his  talent:  "Meissonier  has  always  painted  on 
such  a  small  scale!"  That  is  what  one  would 
begin  by  saying,  if  one  wanted  to  explain  him, 
to  reveal  him  to  some  one  who  did  not  know 
him.  And  what  endless  things  have  been  said 
in  addition,  by  way  of  praise,  criticism,  and  dis- 
cussion, regarding  the  scantiness  of  the  canvases 
or  panels  to  which  the  artist  applied  himself! 

Underlying  this  whole  matter  of  smallness 
there  is,  without  any  paradox,  a  rather  big  ques- 
tion. Beyond  doubt,  material  dimensions  in 
works  of  art  are  not  taken  into  consideration, 
so  long  as  these  dimensions  remain  within  mod- 
eration. It  is  equally  certain  that,  short  of 
introducing  revolutionary  modifications  into  our 


42  MEISSONIER 

aesthetic  creed,  we  would  refuse  to  accept  as  a 
work  of  art  anything  that  exceeded  too  far  these 
limits  of  moderation,  or  fell  too  far  below  them. 
Is  it  not  the  same  in  life  and  in  society,  where 
exaggerated  giants  and  undersized  dwarfs  find 
that  they  are  outcasts,  each  in  his  own  way, 
outside  the  common  law,  and  regarded  simply 
as  curiosities? 

Granted:  but  what  is  the  limit?  Does  Meis- 
sonier  surpass  it,  and  are  his  pictures  too  small? 

Very  well,  let  us  answer  categorically:  no! 
No,  they  are  not  too  small,  considering,  first  of 
all,  their  subject;  secondly,  their  mode  of  pre- 
sentment, their  composition,  their  treatment  as 
to  decoration;  and,  lastly,  the  vividness  and 
intensity  of  their  details. 

One  may  even  go  a  step  further  and  assert 
that  they  have  the  dimensions  that  they  ought 
to  have,  the  dimensions  that  are  best  calculated 
to  enhance  the  artist's  magnificent  gifts,  and  to 
make  one  forget  the  qualities  in  which,  perhaps, 
he  was  lacking.    The  scenes  which   he  kindles 


MEISSONIER  43 

into  life,  to  say  nothing  of  single  characters  that 
he  portrays,  are  like  stories  told  in  an  intimate 
sort  of  way;   they  force  one  to  draw  closer. 

They  have  not  sufficient  harmony  and  am- 
plitude to  attract  attention  from  a  distance;  but, 
seen  from  near  by,  they  give  their  message  with 
exquisite  precision.  They  offer  a  hundred  subtle 
details  for  us  to  seek  out  and  approve;  a  pains- 
taking grouping  for  us  to  admire;  and,  best  of 
all,  expressive  physiognomies  for  us  to  read.  It 
seems  as  though  the  dimensions  had  been  calcu- 
lated on  exactly  the  right  scale  to  awaken  all 
these  impressions  at  once  and  blend  them  as 
completely  as  possible.  And  all  this  would  have 
been  too  scattered  in  an  ampler  setting.  It  is 
because  of  this  perfect  proportion  that  it  has 
been  so  justly  said  that  "Meissonier's  pictures 
never  look  small  excepting  before  you  have 
really  looked  at  them." 

But  let  us  make  no  mistake  in  this  regard. 
Painting  on  a  small  scale  would  not  of  itself 
suffice  to   attain  this   maximum  of  intensity.     It 


44  MEISSONIER 

needed,  on  the  contrary,  an  enormous  amount 
of  talent  to  avoid  an  effect  of  fussiness  and 
preciosity. 

Still  other  reasons  have  been  given  for  the 
great  value  of  this  artist's  works  in  spite  of  their 
smallness,  or  rather  because  of  their  smallness. 
M.  Gustave  Larroumet  has  written  on  this  very 
point  a  brilliant  and  ingenious  special  plea,  of 
which  the  following  is  the  principal  passage: 

"There  is  a  certain  class  of  subjects  in  which 
amplitude  is  an  error  of  judgment.  If  you  wish 
to  paint  the  coronation  of  Napoleon,  the  bridge 
of  Tailebourg,  or  the  battle  of  the  Cimbri,  you 
have  the  right  to  measure  your  canvas  in  pro- 
portion to  the  space  which  such  scenes  occupy 
in  reality;  on  the  other  hand  you  might  conceive 
of  your  subject  in  such  fashion  that  it  could 
be  contained  completely  within  a  square  metre. 
But  why  give  to  an  artistic  reproduction  more 
relative  importance  than  the  originals  have  in 
reality?  Supposing  you  wish  to  show  me  a 
passer-by,  on   foot    or    on    horseback.     How  do 


MEISSONIER  45 

they  interest  me  in  real  life?  Simply  by  the 
rapid  impression  that  they  leave  upon  my  eye 
and  mind.  I  have  seen  them  at  a  distance,  re- 
duced to  a  few  centimetres  by  perspective.  I 
am  satisfied  if  you  show  them  to  me  in  the 
same  proportion." 

The  argument  is  specious.  Perhaps  it  is 
more  ingenious  than  it  is  well  founded,  and  lays 
itself  open  to  discussion.  But  it  will  not  do  to 
linger  too  long  over  abstract  polemics,  when  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  a  reality,  a  type  of  work, 
every  least  portion  of  which  makes  its  appeal 
and,  by  the  very  fact  that  it  is  so  full  of  in- 
terest and  of  life,  practically  answers  the  subtle 
problem  that  it  has  raised. 

In  1840  more  pictures  were  sent  to  the  Salon: 
a  Reader,  a  Saint  Paul,  an  Isaiah. 

Was  the  painter  beginning  to  change  his 
manner?  Those  last  two  pictures  might  give 
reason  to  fear  so.  They  were  life  size,  yet  that 
did  not  prevent  them  from  being  dull  and 
commonplace  in  execution.    Doubtless,  irritated 


46  MEISSONIER 

by  his  critics,  Meissonier  had  wished  to  prove 
that  he  also,  if  he  wanted  to,  could  paint  ac- 
cording to  the  schools.  Even  the  artists  who 
are  surest  of  themselves  sometimes  come  to 
these   hasty   and   impatient   determinations. 

Fortunately  for  him,  he  made  a  bad  show- 
ing, and  a  painter  who  had  great  influence  over 
him,  Jules  Chenavard,  succeeded  in  recalling 
him  from  the  false  path  into  which  he  was 
trying  to  force  his  talent. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  praises  bestowed  upon 
his  genre  painting.  The  Reader,  which  was  "gen- 
uine Meissonier,"  could  not  fail  to  encourage 
him  to  remain  true  to  himself.  The  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  in  its  critical  review  of  the  Salon, 
bestowed  upon  this  picture  an  enthusiastic  trib- 
ute, couched  in  a  style  that  may  seem  to  us 
today  somewhat  old-fashioned: 

"A  Flemish  canvas,  if  there  ever  was  one. 
Picture  to  yourself  a  good  old  soul,  retired  from 
business,  his  skin  as  wrinkled  as  the  parchment 
of  his  books,   ill  clad,   ill   fed,  and   nevertheless 


MEISSONIER  47 

the  happiest  man  in  the  world:  he  is  a  biblio- 
phile, and  he  is  in  the  midst  of  old  books!  You 
could  hardly  believe  how  vividly  this  noble 
passion  is  expressed  in  that  little  picture.  But 
where  in  the  world  did  M.  Meissonier  come 
across  all  those  delightful  little  rarities  in  books? 
You  can  almost  smell  the  adorable  odour  of  old 
bindings!" 

The  young  artist  —  he  was  at  that  time  only 
twenty-five  —  was  awarded  a  third-class  medal. 
The  following  year  he  obtained  a  second-class 
medal,  and  his  painting,  The  Game  of  Chess, 
won  him  a  brilliant  triumph:  it  was  purchased 
by  M.  Paul  Perier.  It  was  a  material  triumph 
not  to  be  despised:  the  picture  brought  two 
thousand  francs,  which  at  that  time  was  consid- 
erable. The  moral  triumph  was  even  bigger, 
because  Paul  Perier  was  an  experienced  col- 
lector, who  acquired  only  such  works  as  were 
worthy  to  take  their  place  in  an  assemblage 
where  the  biggest  names  of  the  period  were 
represented  by  masterpieces. 


48  MEISSONIER 

Henceforth,  success  after  success  followed 
regularly.  Each  picture  that  he  sent  to  the  Salon 
won  increasing  distinction:  A  Smoker  (they  are 
a  goodly  number,  the  smokers  and  the  readers 
that  came  from  Meissonier's  brush!);  A  Young 
Man  Playing  the  'Cello;  The  Painter  in  his 
Studio;  The  Guard-House;  The  Young  Man  Look- 
ing at  Sketches;  The  Game  of  Piquet;  The  Park 
at  Saint-Cloud.  This  last  picture  was  done  in 
collaboration;  Meissonier  painted  only  the  fig- 
ures, the  landscape  was  the  work  of  Fran9ais. 

This  mounting  success,  which  so  quickly 
turned  into  glory,  was  legitimate.  The  artist 
had  by  this  time  all  his  resources  admirably  at 
command,  and  was  fully  imbued  with  his  ideal. 

He  had  learned  to  give  to  every  face  that 
profundity,  to  every  scene  that  intensity  of  action, 
that  constitutes  his  individual  bigness.  The 
arrangement  of  the  milieu,  the  scrupulous  devo- 
tion to  realism  that  we  noted  in  the  opening 
lines  of  this  study,  the  prodigious  anxiety  to  give 
to   every   one   of   his   personages   such   play   of 


PLATE   VI.  — THE   PLAYERS   AT   BOWLS 
(In  the  Casa-Riera  Collection) 

This  curious  composition  represents  some  Spanish  soldiers  play- 
ing bowls  outside  the  city  wall.  The  painting,  which  is  hardly 
larger  than  the  accompanying  reproduction,  is  a  little  masterpiece 
of  actuality,  and  the  people  in  it  move  in  a  thoroughly  faithful 
landscape,  lit  by  the  warm  sunlight  of  Spain. 


^^s 


PIERRE    LAFITTE    &    CIE,    PARIS 


I 


MEISSONIER  51 

physiognomy,  such  expression,  glance,  and  ges- 
ture as  would  best  reveal  their  character  and 
help  us  to  know  them  better,  —  all  these  things 
combine  and  harmonize  to  produce  an  effect  of 
remarkable  power. 

Those  among  Meissonier's  contemporaries 
who  had  assured  taste  and  artistic  insight  were 
impressed  by  the  number  of  qualities  revealed  in 
such  limited  space.  Let  us  listen  to  Th6ophile 
Gautier : 

"Meissonier,"  he  wrote  in  an  article  pub- 
lished in  the  Gazette  des  Beaux-Arts,  "composes 
his  pictures  with  a  science  unknown  to  the 
Flemish  masters  to  whom  he  is  compared. 
Take,  for  example,  a  Smoker!  The  manner  in 
which  he  is  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  picture, 
one  elbow  resting  on  the  table,  one  leg  crossed 
over  the  other,  one  hand  hanging  idly  by  his 
side,  his  body  sunk  within  his  gaping  waistcoat, 
his  head  bowed  forward  in  revery,  or  jovially 
thrown  backward,  —  all  this  forms  a  composition 
which,    while    not    so    apparent    to    the    eye    as 


52  MEISSONIER 

some  dramatic  scene,  nevertheless  works  its 
effect  upon  the  spectator.  The  accessories  clev- 
erly play  their  part  to  throw  more  light  upon 
the  character  of  the  central  figure.  Here  is  a 
Smoker,  for  instance,  who  is  a  worthy  man,  no 
doubt  of  it;  clad  in  an  ample  coat  of  ancient 
cut,  and  of  a  modest  gray,  with  a  well  brushed 
cocked  hat  upon  his  head;  one  foot  swings  free, 
encased  in  a  good,  stout  shoe,  with  silver 
buckle;  and,  with  the  tranquillity  of  an  honest 
conscience,  he  draws  in  a  deep  breath  of  tobacco 
smoke,  which  he  allows  to  escape  again  in  little 
clouds,  wishing,  thrifty  man  that  he  is,  to  make 
the  pleasure  last.  Close  at  hand,  upon  a  table 
with  spiral  legs,  he  has  placed  side  by  side  a 
flagon  and  a  pewter-lidded  tankard  of  beer.  An 
intimate  satisfaction  radiates  from  his  face, 
which  is  furrowed  by  deep  lines,  a  face  expres- 
sive of  foresight,  orderly  habits,  and  rigid  pro- 
bity. One  could  trust  him  with  one's  cash-box 
and  account  books.  Here  is  another  Smoker, 
clad  in  red;   he  also  holds  a  pipe  and  performs 


MEISSONIER  53 

apparently  the  same  action;  but  his  disordered 
garments,  violently  rumpled,  buttoned  askew, 
his  three-cornered  hat  jammed  down  upon  his 
eyebrows,  his  cuffs  and  frilled  shirt  crumpled 
by  nervous  fingers,  his  whole  attitude  expressive 
of  feverish  anxiety,  his  twitching  lip  straining 
around  the  clay  stem  of  his  pipe,  his  hand 
thrust  angrily  into  an  empty  pocket,  —  all  these 
details  proclaim  the  adventurer  or  the  gambler 
in  hard  luck.  He  is  evidently  saying  to  him- 
self: 'Where  the  deuce  could  I  borrow  a  louis 
or  even  a  crown?'  Even  the  background,  if  we 
consult  it,  gives  further  enlightenment.  In  this 
case  we  no  longer  have  neat  plastering  of  mod- 
est gray  and  substantial  brown  woodwork,  but 
battered  and  dirty  walls  stained  with  smoke  and 
grease,  reeking  of  tap-room  foulness  and  unclean 
lodgings.  And  that  shows  how  far  one  smoker 
may  fall  short  of  resembling  another!" 

It  is  precisely  this  difference  between  one 
human  being  and  another,  in  other  words,  this 
quality  of  individuality,  that  constitutes  the  crea- 


54  MEISSONIER 

tive  gift  of  the  real  artist  and  proves  that  the 
honour  of  this  title  is  really  deserved  by  a  painter 
whose  pictures  are  animated  groups,  among 
whom  a  spectator  may  wander,  studying  them 
with  growing  interest,  and  then  afterwards  call 
to  mind  the  various  types,  episodes,  scenes, 
dramas  that  he  has  actually  seen. 

One  can  never  grow  tired  of  quoting  Gautier 
apropos  of  an  artist  whose  brush  always  had 
something  in  common  with  his  pen.  This  mas- 
terly art  critic  has  described  for  us,  sketched  in 
words,  so  to  speak,  still  another  picture:  "A 
man  standing  before  a  window  through  which 
the  daylight  streams  flecking  his  face  with  sil- 
ver; in  his  hand  he  holds  a  book  which  absorbs 
his  entire  attention, — this  is  not  a  complicated 
theme,  but  it  grips  us  like  life  itself.  We  want 
to  know  the  contents  of  that  volume,  it  seems  as 
though  we  could  almost  conjecture  it.  Plenty 
of  other  artists  have  painted  marquises  and  mar- 
chionesses, sleek  abbes  and  shameless  beauties 
of   the    Eighteenth   Century,  thanks   to    the   aid 


MEISSONIER  55 

of  powder  and  patches  and  paint,  rosettes, 
paniers,  bespangled  coats,  silken  stockings,  red- 
heeled  shoes,  fans,  screens,  cameos,  crackled 
porcelain,  bonbonnieres  and  other  futilities. 
Meissonier  rediscovered  the  decent  folk  of  that 
period,  which  was  not  made  up  exclusively  of 
mighty  lords  and  fallen  women,  and  of  which 
we  get,  through  Chardin,  a  glimpse  on  its  honest, 
settled  bourgeois  side.  Meissonier  introduces  us 
into  modest  interiors,  with  woodwork  of  sober 
gray,  furniture  without  gilding,  the  homes  of 
worthy  folk,  simple  and  substantial,  who  read 
and  smoke  and  work,  look  over  prints  and 
etchings,  or  copy  them,  or  chat  sociably,  with 
elbows  on  table,  separated  only  by  a  bottle 
brought  out  from  behind  the  faggots." 

And  who  can  ever  forget,  in  The  Confidence 
(the  picture  which  passed  from  the  gallery  of 
M.  Chauchard  to  that  of  the  Louvre),  how  tense 
and  attentive  the  face  of  the  listener  is,  even  in 
repose,  while  the  relaxation  of  the  body  is  re- 
vealed by  his   posture,  as  he  leans  against  the 


56  MEISSONIER 

wall  with  an  elbow  on  the  table,  —  and  how 
naive  the  face  of  his  friend  —  younger  and  better 
looking  —  as  he  reads  the  letter:  naive,  excited, 
even  somewhat  simple,  with  a  nose  slightly  ex- 
ceeding the  average  length  and  a  forehead  just 
a  trifle  too  low. 

In  the  Game  of  Cards,  a  soldier  and  a  civil- 
ian are  seated  opposite  each  other,  in  the  midst 
of  a  contest.  The  soldier  has  a  dogged  air  and 
he  is  losing.  Apparently,  he  is  not  a  strong 
adversary,  for  the  man  of  questionable  age  who 
faces  him,  his  small,  narrow,  foxy  head  sur- 
mounted by  a  three-cornered  hat,  his  lean  body 
lost  in  the  depths  of  a  huge  greatcoat,  his  thin 
ankle  showing  beneath  the  white  stocking,  be- 
longs to  the  race  of  weaklings  who  live  at  the 
expense  of  the  strong. 

In  The  Etcher,  just  as  in  The  Man  at  the 
Window  —  two  of  his  most  celebrated  pictures 
(the  former  brought  272,000  francs,  even  during 
Meissonier's  life-time)  —  the  interest  of  the  prin- 
cipal—  and  only  —  figure  is  heightened  and  sin- 


MEISSONIER  57 

gularly  beautified  by  a  delicate  effect  of  light, 
forming  an  aureole,  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
picture,  respectively  around  the  face  of  the 
worker  and  of  the  dreamer. 

Note,  in  A  Song,  the  moist  eye  of  the  mus- 
keteer playing  the  guitar,  and  in  Pascuale  the 
half  stupid,  half  poetic  air  of  the  central  figure 
engaged  in  the  same  occupation;  note  also  in 
The  Alms-giving  the  frowning  brow  of  the  horse- 
man as  he  searches  in  his  pocket ;  and  in  The 
Visit  to  the  Chateau  —  an  ostentation  of  coaches 
and  gentry  —  and  in  The  Inn  —  three  cavaliers 
who  have  halted  for  the  moment  and  are 
grouped  around  the  serving-maid,  as  they  drink 
—  the  reconstruction  of  an  entire  epoch  with  its 
pomps  and  its  idylls,  that  justifies  us  in  calling 
these  pictures  veritable  "stage  settings  taken 
from  life." 

One  might  spend  a  long  time  in  analyzing 
the  various  shades  in  the  gamut  of  expressions  on 
the  faces  of  the  principal  and  secondary  figures 
in  the  Game  of  Piquet,  who,  scattered  all  nine  of 


58  MEISSONIER 

them  around  the  two  sides  of  the  tavern  table,  fol- 
low either  amusedly  or  critically  or  with  feverish 
interest  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  game.  And 
in  the  Portrait  of  the  Sergeant,  what  a  magnifi- 
cent collection  of  different  degrees  of  attention: 
that  of  the  portrait  painter  as  he  studies  his  model 
standing  in  front  of  him  on  the  pavement,  in  his 
finest  uniform  and  his  finest  pose;  that  of  the 
model  intent  only  upon  doing  nothing  to  disturb 
his  ultra-martial  bearing,  his  gaze  menacing,  star- 
ing, fixed;  that  of  the  spectators,  some  of  them 
drawing  near,  fascinated,  another  who  casts  an 
amused  glance  at  the  picture  as  he  passes  by, 
with  some  sarcastic  remark  on  his  lips;  another 
who  no  doubt  has  just  been  looking,  and  for  the 
moment,  with  pipe  between  his  teeth,  is  thinking 
of  something  else  as  he  sits  on  a  bench  with  his 
back  to  the  wall  and  his  legs  extended  in  front 
of  him. 

The  Quarrel,  with  all  the  feverish  violence  that 
drives  the  two  bravos  at  each  other's  throats,  has 
perhaps  more  amplitude  and  less  realism  than  any 


PLATE   VII.  — AMATEURS   OF   PAINTINGS 
(In  the  Mus€e  du  Louvre) 

This  picture,  which  must  not  be  confused  with  the  Amateurs  of 
Paintings,  in  the  Musee  Cluny  at  Chantilly,  is  nevertheless  a  replica 
of  the  latter.  They  are  differentiated  by  a  few  insignificant  details, 
but  they  resemble  each  other  in  the  harmony  of  the  grouping  and 
the  truth  of  the  attitudes. 


PIERRE    LAFITTE    *    CIE,    PARIS 


MEISSONIER  6i 

of  the  previously  mentioned  works.  It  is  Meis- 
sonier's  one  romantic  painting,  and  he  professed 
a  great  admiration  for  it,  ranking  it  as  one  of  his 
four  best  canvases.  It  is  recorded  that  the  mas- 
ter said  one  day  to  a  friend : 

"  I  have  seen  my  Quarrel  at  Secretan's.  I 
looked  at  it  as  though  I  had  never  seen  the 
picture  before.  Well,  do  you  know,  it  is  really 
a  fine  thing!" 

MILITARY   PAINTINGS 

Mention  should  be  made,  before  passing  on  to 
the  military  paintings,  of  just  a  few  other  genre 
paintings:  The  Reading  at  Diderofs,  The  Ama- 
teurs, The  Flute  Players. 

But  it  is  the  military  pictures  that  loom  up 
largely  amongst  the  artist's  prolific  output:  — 1807, 
the  portrayal  of  the  Imperial  Apotheosis,  the 
army  passing  by  at  a  gallop,  eagerly  acclaim- 
ing the  Emperor,  as  he  answers  with  a  salute; 

1814,  the     decline,    the    retreat     from     Russia; 

1815,  the    cuirassiers    of   Waterloo    before    the 


62  MEISSONIER 

charge.  This  picture,  which  formed  part  of  the 
Due  d'Aumale's  collection,  was  purchased  for 
250,000  francs,  but  afterwards  twice  resold:  the 
first  time  for  275,000  francs,  the  second  for  400,000 
francs. 

Yet  it  may  be  said  that  the  artist  fully  earned 
what  some  of  these  military  paintings  brought 
him.  Although  he  mounted  successively  all  the 
rungs  of  official  honours  (he  was  made  Knight  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour  at  the  age  of  thirty.  Officer 
at  forty-one,  Commander  at  fifty-two,  received  the 
grand  golden  medal  at  the  Exposition  Universelle 
of  1855,  and  became  a  member  of  the  Academy  of 
Fine  Arts  in  1861),  Meissonier  nevertheless  always 
led  a  singularly  active  and  industrious  life.  Not 
only  did  he  paint  a  prodigious  number  of  pictures 
(in  1886,  four  hundred  were  already  catalogued), 
but  he  took  part  in  the  Italian  campaign  of  1859 
and  in  the  Franco-Prussian  war ! 
^  In  1859  he  was,  at  his  own  request,  attached  to 
the  Imperial  Staff  of  the  French  army,  dreaming, 
as  he  had  himself  acknowledged,  of  becoming  "the 


MEISSONIER  63 

Van  der  Meulen"  of  the  campaign.  At  all  events, 
he  got  out  of  it  one  of  his  best  canvases:  Napo- 
leon III.  at  Solferino,  which  never  left  the  Musee 
du  Luxembourg  until  it  was  transferred  to  the 
Musee  du  Louvre. 

He  himself  has  related,  with  a  delightful  sense 
of  humour,  the  machiavelian  intrigues  to  which 
he  resorted  in  order  to  secure  the  Emperor's  con- 
sent to  pose.  For  the  idea  of  painting  a  figure, 
and  especially  the  central  figure,  without  a  sitting, 
was  a  heresy  that  he  could  not  even  contemplate. 
Let  us  hear  his  own  account : 

"Would  Napoleon  IIL  pose  for  Solferino? 
That  was  what  weighed  on  my  mind  most  of 
all.  You  know  my  love  for  exactitude.  I  had 
revisited  Solferino,  in  order  to  get  the  landscape 
and  the  battle-field  direct  from  nature.  You 
can  understand  how  essential  it  was  for  me  to 
have  the  Emperor  give  me  a  sitting,  if  only 
for  five  minutes.  I  managed  things,  I  think, 
rather  cleverly.  I  began  by  blocking  in  my 
picture  roughly;  then  I  invited  an  officer  whom 


64  MEISSONIER 

I  happened  to  know,  to  come  and  give  me  his 
advice  on  certain  military  details.  This  officer, 
as  I  was  aware,  had  served  at  Solferino.  I  led 
him  on  to  tell  the  part  he  had  played  in  the 
combat,  and  when  the  iron  was  hot  I  proposed 
that  he  should  let  me  include  him  among  the 
figures  in  my  picture.  He  consented  eagerly. 
When  the  portrait  was  successfully  finished,  he 
talked  of  it  to  other  officers,  who  came  to  see  it 
and,  in  their  turn,  offered  to  serve  me  as  models. 
One  of  them  was  acquainted  with  Marechal 
Magnan,  and  it  was  he  who  brought  me  Fleury, 
who   in   his   turn   brought   me   Leboeuf. 

"The  latter  undertook  to  show  my  painting 
to  the  Emperor,  and  to  that  end  secured  me 
an  invitation  to  go  to  Fontainebleau.  Napoleon 
III.  received  me  cordially,  and  after  spending 
a  long  time  in  studying  my  picture,  in  which 
only  one  figure  was  now  lacking,  he  inquired 
who,  according  to  my  idea,  that  missing  fig- 
ure should  be.  'Why,  you.  Sire.'  'Then  you 
are  going  to  paint  my  portrait?'   he   remarked 


MEISSONIER  65 

*  How  will  you  do  that  ?  '  '  From  memory,  and 
with  the  help  of  published  documents.'  *  But 
all  that  is  not  equal  to  a  single  sitting,'  re- 
plied the  Emperor.  *  Do  you  not  agree  with 
me,  M.  Meissonier?'  'Undoubtedly,  Sire,  but 
— '  'Very  well,  nothing  is  simpler,  let  us  both 
mount  our  horses,  and  go  for  a  short  ride, 
and  while  we  chat,  you  can  study  me  at  your 
leisure.'  , 

"Overjoyed  at  the  opportunity  afforded,  I 
rapidly  formed  a  most  mephistophelian  plot.  As 
it  happened,  it  was  precisely  at  Fontainebleau 
that  my  old  friend  Jadin  had  his  studio.  I  ma- 
noeuvred to  guide  our  course  in  the  direction 
of  that  studio,  and  when  we  were  at  his  very 
door,  I  boldly  proposed  to  the  Emperor  that 
we  should  pay  a  visit  to  the  good  Jadin.  He 
laughingly  consented,  and  thereupon  the  two  of 
us  descended  upon  Jadin  who,  unprepared  for 
either  of  us,  was  in  his  painter's  blouse,  smok- 
ing his  pipe.  The  Emperor,  greatly  amused 
by  this  adventure,  refused   to   let  Jadin   disturb 


66  MEISSONIER 

himself.  He  rolled  a  cigarette  and,  taking  his 
seat  astride  of  a  chair,  entered  into  conversa- 
tion. Meanwhile  I  had  seized  the  first  pencil 
that  came  to  hand,  and  fell  to  sketching.  The 
unforeseen  sitting  lasted  for  a  good  half-hour. 
It  served  me  not  only  for  the  completion  of 
Solferino,  but  for  another  picture  besides,  a  little 
panel." 

A  fine  example  of  artistic  perseverance  and 
diplomacy,  —  greatly  aided,  it  must  be  admitted, 
by  the  complaisance  of  the  interested  Emperor. 

Eleven  years  later  —  the  year  of  terror  — the 
artist,  in  spite  of  his  fifty-six  years,  undertook 
active  service.  Yielding,  however,  to  the  en- 
treaties of  his  friends,  he  left  the  army  near 
Sedan,  the  night  before  the  battle  of  Borny,  and 
set  forth  alone,  on  horseback.  His  journey  back 
to  Paris  was  a  veritable  Odyssey.  Along  the 
road  to  Verdun  he  was  constantly  taken  for  a  spy 
and  halted.  At  Etain,  he  was  taken  prisoner,  and 
owed  his  release  solely  to  the  universal  renown 
of  his  name.     It  took  him  three  days  to  reach 


MEISSONIER  67 

Poissy,  where  he  had  his  country  home;  and 
once  there,  he  organized  a  national  guard.  But 
at  the  news  of  the  investment  of  Paris,  Meis- 
sonier  hastened  to  make  his  way  into  the  besieged 
capital. 

The  morning  after  the  Fourth  of  Septem- 
ber, he  besought  the  Minister  of  War,  Leon 
Gambetta,  for  an  appointment  as  prefect  in  one  of 
the  departments  that  were  either  invaded  or  men- 
aced. His  patriotism  was  only  partly  satisfied; 
he  was  appointed  Colonel  in  the  staff  of  the 
National  Guard.  "The  populace  of  Paris,"  says 
a  witness,  "when  they  saw  that  little  man  with 
florid  face  and  long  gray  beard,  and  legs  en- 
cased in  tight  leathern  breeches,  passing  back 
and  forth  along  the  boulevards,  often  cheered 
him,  mistaking  him  for  the  major-general  of 
artillery." 

The  painter  planned  to  commemorate  the  de- 
fence of  Paris  in  a  picture  of  colossal  size.  The 
project  never  got  beyond  the  stage  of  an  outline 
sketch,  of  deep  and  tragic  interest. 


68  MEISSONIER 

Have  we  cause  to  regret  this?  Meissonier 
was  an  allegorical  painter,  and  nowhere  more 
than  in  his  military  pictures  —  both  scenes  and 
types  —  do  his  powerful  and  delicate  qualities 
of  penetrating  observation  reveal  themselves. 
Every  one  of  his  soldiers,  —  trooper,  musketeer, 
French  guard.  Grenadier  of  the  guard,  —  in  full 
uniform  or  in  fatigue,  or  even  in  the  disarray  of 
the  barrack-room,  has  his  own  personal  physiog- 
nomy, and  manner  and  temperament;  they  one 
and  all  live,  and  in  them  lives  the  conscientious 
and  brilliant  artist  who  laboured  so  faithfully  to 
create  them  and  succeeded  so  well. 

Is  it  not  because  of  this  expressive  relief  both 
of  figures  and  gestures  that  people  were  able  to 
compare  Meissonier  to  Marmot,  and  to  say  that 
"  Meissonier  was  worthy  to  paint  the  stories  of 
Marmot,  and  Marmot  worthy  to  furnish  stories  to 
Meissonier  "  ? 

It  would  be  only  just,  before  leaving  him, 
to  defend  the  artist  —  who  after  enjoying  a 
vogue    that    was    perhaps    a    trifle    too    enthu- 


PLATE    VIII.  — NAPOLEON    III.   AT    SOLFERINO 
(Tommy  Thierry  Bequest,  Musee  du  Louvre) 

Under  any  other  hand  than  Meissonier's,  the  group  constituting 
the  Imperial  Staff  would  have  been  banale  in  the  extreme,  but 
thanks  to  an  ability  that  has  no  parallel  outside  of  the  great  Flemish 
painters,  the  artist  has  succeeded  in  making  these  miniature  figures 
veritable  portraits  of  the  shining  military  lights  of  that  period. 


MEISSONIER  71 

siastic,  has  fallen,  quite  unjustly  into  slight 
disfavour  —  from  two  criticisms  that  have  fre- 
quently been  passed  upon  him.  Too  much  stress 
has  been  laid  on  his  lack  of  the  gift  of  colour 
and  the  gift  of  grace. 

To  be  sure,  he  is  not  a  colourist  in  the  grand, 
resplendent  sense  in  which  the  word  is  associated 
with  the  names  of  Titian  or  Paolo  Veronese ;  but 
it  has  been  said  with  a  good  deal  of  reason, 
that  he  had  a  colour  sense  "suited  to  his  range 
of  vision."  In  view  of  the  realistic  and  pal- 
pable clearness  with  which  he  saw  things,  he 
must  needs  adapt  a  soberly  exact  scheme  of  col- 
our; for  in  any  one  of  his  works  the  dazzling 
and  magnificent  orgies  indulged  in  by  lyric 
poets  of  the  palette  would  have  been  as  out  of 
place  as  a  character  from  Shakespeare  would  be 
in  the  midst  of  a  prosaic  scene  in  our  modern 
literal-minded  drama.  The  colourists  use  their 
tints  to  paint  dreams,  transposing  into  a  resplen- 
dent and  intense  register  the  tranquil  harmony 
of  the   actual   colours;   they   produce  something 


72  MEISSONIER 

different  from  what  the  rest  of  the  world  sees; 
something  more,  if  you  choose,  but  at  any  rate 
something  different.  The  impeccable  truthful- 
ness of  a  Meissonier  stubbornly  adheres  to 
that  modest  harmony  which  the  others  leave 
behind  them  in  a  soaring  flight  that  some- 
times verges  on  folly.  One  might  prefer  to 
have  had  him  totally  different;  but,  granting 
the  serious  forethought  in  his  choice  of  sub- 
ject and  conception  of  structure,  his  colouring 
could  not  have  been  different  from  what  it 
was. 

As  to  his  lack  of  charm  and  grace,  that  is  a 
reproach  which  for  the  most  part  he  took  little 
trouble  to  avoid,  for  he  hardly  ever  painted 
women;  but  it  was  a  reproach  which  he  in  no 
way  deserved  when  he  did  transfer  them  to  his 
canvases.  We  need  to  offer  no  further  proof 
of  this  than  his  adorable  studies  of  Mme.  Sabatier 
and  the  portrait  that  he  made  of  her.  The  strange 
attraction  of  that  beautiful  face,  so  full  of  intelli- 
gence and  fascination,  the  delicate  and  matchless 


MEISSONIER  73 

suppleness  of  posture,  all  blend  together  in  a  com- 
pelling yet  mysterious  radiance  with  which  only 
a  great  artist  could  illuminate  his  paper  or  his 
canvas. 

Accordingly  one  should  guard  against  any 
judgment  too  absolute,  too  definitely  peremp- 
tory regarding  a  talent  so  rich  in  resources; 
but  undeniably  Meissonier  greatly  preferred  to 
paint  musketeers  or  grenadiers,  to  say  nothing 
of  horses. 

Horses,  by  the  way,  were  one  of  Meissonier's 
weaknesses.  He  owned  some  beautiful  ones, 
and  used  them  not  only  as  models  but  also  for 
riding.  He  spoke  on  many  occasions  of  the 
incomparable  pleasure  that  he  found  in  directing 
"those  admirable  machines,"  which  he  defined 
as  "the  stupidest  of  all  intelligent  animals."  But 
that  in  no  way  detracted  from  their  beauty  of 
form.  "What  a  pleasure  it  is  to  make  their 
mechanism  work!"  he  confided  to  one  of  his 
distinguished  friends.  "Just  think  that  the  slight- 
est movement  of  the  rider,  the  slightest  motion 


74  MEISSONIER 

of  hand  or  leg,  the  slightest  displacement  of  the 
body  have  their  immediate  effect  upon  the 
horse's  movements,  and  that  a  true  horseman 
plays  upon  his  mount  as  a  musician  plays 
upon  his  instrument.  For  the  painter  a  horse 
is  a  whole  gamut  of  lights  and  of  colours.  Its 
eye,  now  calm  and  now  excited,  the  quivers  of 
its  coat  and  undulations  that  run  through  it,  the 
variety  of  its  lines  and  the  infinite  beauty  of  their 
combinations  afford  material  for  a  whole  lifetime 
of  study." 

And  here  again  we  meet,  as  in  everything  that 
he  said  and  thought,  that  same  love  of  detail,  that 
meticulous  admiration  for  reality  and  that  cult  of 
patient  labour  which  is  the  secret  of  all  that  he 
achieved. 

Furthermore,  there  was  no  moment  in  his 
remarkable  career  —  which  was  destined  to  be 
crowned  by  an  apotheosis  when  the  artists  of  the 
entire  world  united  in  choosing  him  as  president 
of  the  Exposition  Universelle  des  Beaux-Arts  in 
1889  —  there  was  no  moment  in  his  career  when 


MEISSONIER  75 

he  sacrificed  the  sacred  principle  of  exactitude 
and  of  documentation  which  were  the  foundation 
of  his  splendid  honesty. 

Of  this  artistic  virtue  there  are  abundant 
examples.  We  have  already  cited  one  in  the 
opening  pages ;  we  will  cite  another  by  way 
of  conclusion:  one  of  his  friends  called  upon 
Meissonier  at  Poissy :  "  The  concierge  told  me," 
this  friend  relates,  *' '  Meissonier  is  in  the  studio 
opening  on  the  court.'  I  found  my  way  into 
that  huge  studio  cumbered  with  sketches  of 
every  sort,  with  studies  of  horses  modelled  in 
wax  and  standing  on  pedestals.  I  waited  a 
while,  and  then  in  trying  to  discover  where 
a  beam  of  vivid  light  found  its  way  in  through 
some  crack  in  a  door,  I  discovered,  in  the  little 
court  adjoining  the  chalet,  Meissonier  out  in 
the  blazing  sunlight  astride  of  a  bench  that 
did  duty  for  a  horse ;  heavy  boots,  breeches  of 
white  cashmere,  uniform  of  grenadier  of  the 
Imperial  guard,  decorations  on  his  breast,  and, 
last     of     all,     the     'gray    redingote.'     He    was 


76  MEISSONIER 

seated  on  a  saddle  lent  to  him  by  the  son  of 
Prince  Jerome.  In  his  hand  he  held  a  tablet 
on  which  was  fastened  a  sheet  of  white  paper, 
and  he  was  carefully  sketching  himself,  study- 
ing his  reflection  in  a  mirror.  It  was  the 
middle  of  summer  and  the  heat  was  atro- 
cious. *  My  model  can't  pose  as  Napoleon,' 
he  told  me,  'but  I  have  exactly  Napoleon's 
legs.' " 

Is  it  necessary  to  say  after  this  that  no 
painter  ever  informed  himself  with  such  reli- 
gious zeal  in  regard  to  costumes  and  acces- 
sories? Of  the  heroic  Imperial  Epoch  which 
he  worshipped  above  all  others,  he  sought  and 
gathered  together  all  sorts  of  relics:  not  con- 
tent with  the  possession  of  a  white  horse 
closely  resembling  that  of  Napoleon  I.,  he  used 
to  point  with  pride,  both  in  his  collection  and 
in  his  paintings,  to  a  complete  set  of  trappings 
that  had  once  served  the  Emperor;  and  one  of 
the  greatest  rages  that  he  ever  felt  in  his  life 
was  produced  by  the  respectful  but  firm  refusal 


MEISSONIER  77 

of  the  Beaux- Arts  to  lend  him  the  "Gray 
Redingote." 

His  "working  library,"  as  he  called  it,  con- 
tained incomparable  riches.  It  included  breeches, 
hats,  helmets,  boots,  shoes,  pumps,  buckles, 
walking-sticks,  and  jewelry.  He  would  have 
been  able,  by  rummaging  there,  to  clothe  from 
top  to  toe  whole  generations  of  bourgeoise,  nobles, 
and  labourers,  from  any  epoch  of  French  his- 
tory, to  say  nothing  of  the  various  regiments 
and  the  staff  officers!  He  quite  literally  bought 
out  the  stock  of  second-hand  dealers  in  the 
Temple  market,  which  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
nineteeth  century  was  the  sales  place  of  old 
clothes  once  worn  by  our  great-grandparents  and 
their  ancestors. 

And  we  know,  —  his  fine  passion  for  the  truth 
was  always  cropping  out, — that  he  actually  suf- 
fered because  he  could  not  clothe  his  models 
with  genuine  old  linen.  At  the  end  of  some  very 
conscientious  researches  that  he  had  pursued  in 
the  Imperial  Library,  he  considered  that  he  had 


78  MEISSONIER 

made  a  discovery  that  was  useful  to  his  art,  when 
he  read  in  the  Encyclopedia  that  in  the  eighteenth 
century  linen  was  cut  on  the  bias,  and  not  straight 
across,  as  it  is  to-day.  We  must  not  smile!  For 
herein  lay  the  secret  of  greater  suppleness  in  the 
folds. 

And  when,  detail  by  detail,  his  documenta- 
tion had  been  completed,  what  endless  sketches, 
experiments,  rough  drafts  had  to  follow!  For 
a  single  painting  he  acknowledged  that  he  had 
to  make  whole  "cubic  metres"  of  preliminary 
studies. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  when  the  picture  was 
finished  and  more  than  finished,  it  did  not  always 
please  him.  The  same  friend  whose  personal 
testimony  we  have  already  cited,  informs  us  that 
one  day,  in  his  presence,  the  artist  violently 
slashed  up  a  painting  which  everybody  else  had 
pronounced  perfect,  while  at  that  very  moment 
a  purchaser  was  waiting  for  it  in  the  vesti- 
bule :  "  I  don't  know  how  to  paint ! "  cried  the 
artist  in  despair,  "I  shall  never  learn  my  craft." 


MEISSONIER  79 

There  we  have  an  impulse  and  a  sacrifice 
which  few  painters  would  be  capable  of  mak- 
ing in  sincerity,  and  which  define  better  than 
the  longest  dissertations  could  do,  the  soul  of 
Meissonier,   his  talent  and  his  glory. 


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